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Campaigns Feeling Effects of Iowa Poll

Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, left, played bass at a New Year's Eve party on Monday, and Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama spoke to voters at a rally on Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit
Andy Clark/Reuters, left; Scott Olson/Getty Images

DES MOINES — Dennis Kucinich today urged his supporters in Iowa to back Senator Barack Obama as their second choice at the caucuses Thursday if his support is not strong enough to be viable in the 1,781 precincts across the state.

Mr. Kucinich said in a statement that he and Mr. Obama had something in common: “Change.” They both also have long opposed the war in Iraq.

The depth of Mr. Kucinich’s support is minimal; just one percent of caucus-goers chose him in today’s Des Moines Register poll, which showed Mr. Obama with a widened lead over his Democratic rivals.

But the timing of the Kucinich announcement -- coinciding with the poll results -- suggests a possible “poll effect,” in which marginal candidates and undecided voters can start to move toward a perceived winner.

Mr. Obama seemed to have a fresh bounce in his step as he set off on his first fly-around tour of Iowa. At the first of four events on the day, he addressed an audience of more than 1,000 people in Des Moines, saying: “I think 2008 is going to be a good year. That’s what I think. I think some big things might happen in 2008.”

While Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Bill Clinton and their campaign advisers publicly projected confidence and optimism, hitting the campaign trail with brio Tuesday morning, there was substantial surprise and consternation behind the scenes. Her first event, Ames, drew about 750 people.

Her advisers said that no one had predicted that the poll would show Mr. Obama as the preference of 32 percent of caucus-goers compared with 25 percent for Mrs. Clinton and 24 percent for John Edwards.

Soon after the Register poll was published Monday night, the Clinton camp sent out a memo questioning the methodology and the sampling, including the fact that 40 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers described themselves as independents.

“A lot of people read about this poll and were totally taken aback,” said one prominent Clinton donor in Manhattan, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen criticizing Mrs. Clinton’s operation.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee led in the Register poll with 32 percent of those polled preferring the former Arkansas governor, compared with 26 percent for Mitt Romney. That good news for Mr. Huckabee came a day after facing guffaws from a room full of reporters for showing them an ad criticizing Mr. Romney that he had pulled from the air. Today, Mr. Huckabee tried a new tack.

“I need your vote because I can’t do it, I can’t spend enough money here” to fight back with his own ads, he told a crowd of about 200 people in Sergeant Bluff, saying his victory would be a historic statement “in terms of the influence of money and the tone of presidential politics.”

Mitt Romney was in central Iowa, where he went after Mr. Huckabee for making critical comments about President Bush’s foreign policy on Monday.

“I think we should come together and recognize the great work our president is doing and not take our rhetoric or our plays from Democratic playbook,” Mr. Romney said. “This is the kind of stuff you expect of the Democrats, but it’s certainly not something you expect of a presidential contender on the Republican side.”

Mr. Obama did not dwell on the results of the poll. Privately, his aides questioned the numbers themselves, but said the trajectory matched the momentum that they were seeing in data they are collecting hourly through telephone calls and door-to-door canvassing.

“The polls look good, but understand this,” Mr. Obama told supporters jammed inside the gymnasium at Roosevelt High School. “The polls are not enough. The only thing that counts is whether or not you show up to caucus. The only thing that counts is whether over the next 72 hours you are willing to work for this.”

A fresh batch of Obama volunteers from across Iowa and the country descended on neighborhoods, passing out literature about the caucuses to remind voters of their specific precinct location for Thursday evening. As the campaign hurtles to a close here, aides believe the momentum from the poll could be a booster rocket in pushing supporters to their caucuses.

“After 10 months, it looks like it just might work,” Mr. Obama said. “It looks like it might be paying off. Our bet on the American people might just work, but we’ve got more work to do.”

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In a brief interview with reporters before his plane flew from Des Moines to Sioux City, Mr. Obama said he put more stock in what he was seeing on the ground, rather than the findings of a particular poll.

“I think it’s very hard to read what’s going on except for the fact that we’ve got these great crowds with unbelievable energy,” he said. “We’re still seeing these undecideds coming to our events, which is really exciting because it gives me a chance to persuade them one last time.

“And now, I think it’s going to come down to who gets their supporters out. I’m putting my money on my organization. It’s as good and as dedicated and as intense as I’ve ever seen.”

When Mr. Kucinich ran for president four years ago, and was
sagging in the polls, he urged his supporters to make a similar second-choice partnership with Mr. Edwards. At the time, aides to Mr.
Edwards said that move helped contribute to his second-place finish
in the caucuses.

Mr. Edwards began a 36-hour marathon campaign swing on Tuesday, starting with an event with than 500 people in Ames.

“I don’t need a poll to tell me that we’re moving,” Mr. Edwards said.

“We’re moving every single day.”

Joe Trippi, an advisor to the campaign, said he was skeptical of the poll’s findings. “It doesn’t make sense at all,” he said. “You’d have to have 220,000 people voting for that poll to be right. If that’s what’s going on, there’s no historic model for it.”

Mr. Trippi, who was Howard Dean’s campaign manager in 2004, invoked his experience in that year’s Iowa caucus, when the Dean campaign predicted unprecedented turnouts, which never materialized. “I was the guy here last time who thought it would be 200,000 people,” he said. “It didn’t happen.”

The three Democrats leading in the polls followed one another across the state, all stopping in Council Bluffs. The Clinton campaign sought to match the bad news from the poll with some good news from the donors, announcing Monday night that Mrs. Clinton had raised more than $100 million in 2007.

Still, some Clinton donors in New York who spoke on condition of anonymity said Tuesday morning that they were unnerved by the Register poll. They said that they had always been told by the Clinton high command that Iowa would be a challenge but they said they had been led to assume that Mr. Edwards would most likely come in first; they never expected an Obama blowout.

Some Clinton advisers said that if Mr. Obama has actually managed to attract a whole new crop of independent voters to the caucus process, he would be very tough to beat at the caucuses. But they expressed skepticism that the poll results would hold up, noting that the caucuses are a highly unpredictable process that would come down to whether people would actually show up at their precincts and whom they would favor for their second choice.

Mrs. Clinton’s day on the trail did not reflect the internal concerns. She came out swinging, starting off the final 48 hours of her Iowa campaign by assuring her audience in a hotel ballroom in Ames that her administration would repair the missteps of the Bush presidency.

“After seven long years of George Bush and Dick Cheney,” she said as the crowd groaned, “starting Thursday night, we are taking our country back and you all are going to lead the way.”

She was joined on the trail with her daughter, Chelsea, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, and her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who was last seen on the trail two weeks ago.

Mrs. Clinton appeared feisty yet relaxed, lacing her stump speech with jokes about drug companies and a strange technical difficulty that fed her speech back through the speakers. Hearing words that she had just spoken reverberate back through the packed room, she paused, looked up at the ceiling, and laughed.

“I was in Muscatine yesterday in the middle of going on about the Bush administration, and the microphone completely died,” she said. “I said, ‘I know they’re a little obsessed with me, but this is getting absurd.’ “